


thrown here or found, to freeze or to thaw

by MadHattie



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, FatT Rarepair Swap, Post-Winter, Sharing a Bed, depictions of panic attacks, falling in love with the dude who killed you but didn't really kill you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-17 01:50:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14822940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadHattie/pseuds/MadHattie
Summary: Ephrim returns to Samothes's forge just as spring begins. What he finds is not what he expected, but something better





	thrown here or found, to freeze or to thaw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pyrrhum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhum/gifts).



> a gift for pyrrhum on twitter!! I had a lot of fun writing this.  
> title from Hozier's "In a Week"

Snowmelt was dripping like rain from the needles of pine trees when Ephrim first agreed to go back to the forge. A chunk of half-frozen slush dropped into the gap between his neck and the collar of his jacket, and he tried not to shiver as it slithered down his back. In front of him, Hadrian was preaching to him about the orders of Samothes. The real one this time, not the person who had whispered to Ephrim in words of black fire. Not that it mattered-- he was tired of taking orders from gods, real or not. The fact that he was even bothering to listen to Hadrian’s message was more a token of his respect for Hadrian than anything else.

 

“... we need to figure out what’s happening down there. All we know is that when Alyosha came back, he was covered in leaves and he had no memory of what had happened.  Samothes wants someone to investigate to see if… the other one is still there.”

 

_ He doesn’t know _ was Ephrim’s first thought. The second was  _ I can’t tell him that I killed that man.  _ The snow reached his lower back and stuck, the cold of it burning his skin.

 

“...so that’s why we need you to go to the forge again.”

 

It took a moment for Ephrim to realize that Hadrian had stopped talking. The other man waited with a careful sort of patience that he had never had before he returned from that strange place trapped inside the blade.

 

“Will you be accompanying me?” Ephrim tried not to sigh as he said it.

 

“I have… other things to attend to.” Hadrian’s gaze flickered towards the old University tower, where Ephrim knew Rosanna and Benjamin were waiting. Ephrim didn’t blame him for his sentimentality, but he wished that it didn’t come at the cost of a traveling partner.

 

“Tell me, why should I even bother with that place? We’ve been doing good work here, getting all the refugees settled. What does that place hold that is more important than all the people here?” Ephrim stepped forward a few paces just so he could look Hadrian in the eye from a different angle.

 

“The people here are safe for now. Even with you gone, Throndir and Red Jack can take care of them. But those plants that Alyosha came back with, they’re like nothing that’s ever been seen before. They can grow in places that the Heat and the Dark has touched. Whatever is causing those plants to grow, that might be the key to stopping the Heat and the Dark once and for all.”

 

Ephrim’s hand clenched at his side, almost unconsciously. The hole of dark fire was wrapped tightly with bandages, but it still ate away at anything that got too close.

 

“I’ll do it,” he said, voice quiet. “Just tell me what direction to ride and I’ll be gone before morning.”

 

Hadrian smiled, something Ephrim hadn’t seen before. “The direction that you want to go is ‘down’, but it’s not as simple as that. I’ll tell you what you need to know.”

 

 

(-)

 

 

Ephrim had never ridden on a horse as stubborn as the one he was on now, although Fero had offered to give him a lift once or twice. He had urged it over sodden fields and places where towns must have been just months ago, but this tower was apparently the final straw. One look at the strange, humble building in the midst of a shock of bright green trees, and the old thing would go no further. Ephrim sighed as he dismounted, patting the horse absently. It was no use trying to bring it any further anyway. From what he had heard, the path ahead was treacherous and unpredictable. The most that he could hope for was that the trip would be short enough for the horse to still be there when he got back.

 

The air was warm inside the building, warmer than the air outside, but still fresh and clean. From a dark room to the side of the stairs, a dozen or so blank-faced pala-din watched the world with stone eyes. Ephrim shivered under their gaze as he took careful steps towards the door to the stairs. From here the path was tricky, but Hadrian had assured him that if he kept his destination clear in his mind, he would be able to travel between the strata without too much trouble, though from the whispers he heard between Hella and Adaire, that may not have been entirely true. The women had exchanged a worried glance when he had told them where he was going, though neither one had any advice to give him about the trip. When he turned away from the two of them, he heard Adaire mutter something about “the blind faith of church-types,” though in a far less condescending way, he guessed, than she would have had she been talking about Hadrian.

 

The door to the stairwell was already open, a pale light shining up from somewhere in the lower levels. There was a rhythm in the air as he looked down, a thrumming heartbeat that must have been his, for lack of anyone else in the room. Ephrim shifted his pack on his shoulders and took a deep breath, inhaling the heavy scent of dirt in the air. It was a fresh smell, calming in a way that he couldn’t explain. He stepped down into it, hand on the wooden railing worn smooth with time, and descended into a world without color.

 

 

At first he thought it was just the way the light filtered through the air, hitting the long stone bridge in a way that left it pale and lifeless, but as he looked down across the landscape below, he could see that the world had been drained to monochrome, hills and forests and cities laid out before him as if drawn in pencil.

 

Then out of the corner of his eye he spotted it-- a flash of green suspended in midair, small but bright against the pale landscape. Ephrim leaned forward to see it, drawing dangerously close to the edge of the bridge.

 

It was a leaf, hovering as if frozen mid-fall. If he changed his position, he could see a vine trailing back towards a gap in space. Without thinking, he reached out over the edge to grab it--

 

And he fell

 

And the world shattered.

 

 

(-)

 

 

When he opened his eyes, the world was green, the sort of deep, consuming green he hadn’t seen since the long winter began. It plastered the high ceilings of the place, vines dripping tendrils down to meet with broad flat leaves the size of dinner plates sprouting up from bushes and trees. Bright flowers, pink and orange and yellow and blue bloomed around him and blanketed the mossy floor with bursts of color.

 

In the middle of the room was an anvil. It was one he had seen before.

 

Ephrim scrambled to his feet, grabbing at the branches nearest to him for purchase as he surveyed the room. The once-cavernous darkness had been filled to the brim with those strange plants, leaving just a small space in which to move. As he stood, the living walls around him seemed to press even closer. It wouldn’t be long before the whole room was filled with life.

 

Resting next to the anvil was a hammer, placed there with a careless hand. Ephrim had heard about what happened to Alyosha, how he woke from a daze in what used to be a forge with flowers blooming wherever he struck his hammer. Alyosha had fled as soon as he woke up, but what he saw was not a dream. Ephrim could see the plants and the cavern, the anvil and the hammer.

 

He could see the pool of blood on the floor, still not dry though it had been months since he had driven his sword through the fake Samothes’s chest.

 

Ephrim shuddered, turning his head away from the scene, and as he did he caught sight of something deep within a patch of bushes. He pushed back at the branches and tried to ignore the way they left shallow scratches up his arms. At his feet lay a human hand, tan and smooth and curled into a fist. Attached to the hand was a wrist, and an arm, and if he went to investigate further he would probably find a body. A body that he was responsible for. A body that belonged to a man he had killed.

 

As he moved to step back, to flee this place completely and return to the University tower with no evidence of his journey, a thick vine caught his boot and tripped him. He stumbled, grabbing on to the nearest tree for support and nearly landing flat on his back.

 

Beneath him, the hand uncurled and twitched. Ephrim tried his best not to scream, not to run away. He was, after all, here on a mission.

 

Taking a breath, he steeled himself and pulled away at the leaves surrounding the body. The figure among the branches was different than the last time he had seen him. The face was similar, but clean-shaven and softer. The bulk of muscle from working the forge had dwindled to a much leaner frame. The most noticeable thing, though, was the hair, once coal-black, now a matted halo of golden curls. Whoever this man was, he was not the man who Ephrim had killed. He was not Samothes.

 

Ephrim pulled the man from the leaves, dragging him by his arms until he was in the small clearing. A quick check showed that he still had a pulse, but his breathing was shallow and quiet. Across his chest was a shallow sword wound, not deep enough to be fatal, but still fresh and open. He didn’t stir when Ephrim put a hand on his head, nor when Ephrim picked him up and pulled him onto his back to carry him.

 

The vines parted as Ephrim walked back the way he came, as if recoiling from his presence. Where there was once a bare wall, a staircase grew and twisted upwards with the same architecture as the tower above.

 

He carried the man up the stairs, pausing and readjusting and hefting his weight until at last he reached the same wooden door that he had come through to enter this place. He pushed the door open, walked to the middle of the room, and collapsed unceremoniously to the ground, trying to lay the man down as gently as he could. There were medical supplies in the pack that he had carried with him, and he dug them out, extracting a roll of bandages. With some hesitation he pulled up the other man’s shirt to try and clean the wound, dumping out a good portion of his water skin onto it. The man flinched, but gave no other sign of consciousness, even as Ephrim wrapped the bandage around his torso.

 

“Who  _ are _ you?” Ephrim whispered as he secured the bandage.

 

The man did not reply. Instead he only shifted and murmured in his sleep, his mouth set in a tight frown.

 

 

(-)

 

 

The light in the sky was waning when Ephrim emerged from the tower, not the sudden darkness of a missing sun, like he feared would happen again, but a normal sunset. He had no way of knowing if the sun was setting on the same day that he had entered the tower, or if that mysterious space beneath the ground had eaten away at his time and made him miss days or weeks. His horse was still around at least, grazing on the grass at the side of the road. It nosed at his hand when he patted it, and then went back to eating. He was just about to grab the reins when a shout and a resounding crash came from inside the tower.

 

By the time Ephrim made it to the door, the man was already on his feet, his blue eyes wide, like a cornered animal.

 

“Where am I?” The man spat, though there was a note of fear running through his voice. He clutched at the doorway to the chamber with the Pala-din, and Ephrim noticed that he had somehow managed to pull the broken door shut. “Who are you?”

 

Ephrim put his hands up, as calming of a gesture as he could think to make. “You’re safe. We’re in a magic tower, and you’re here because I pulled you out of the remains of Samothes’s forge. Do you remember why you were there?”

 

“The forge? I- no, I killed him. It should have been a tomb, I-” As he spoke, his words came quicker, his breathing more rapid. “I did what the mages said. This should be over. Why aren’t we in Marielda?”

 

“Woah, hold on. Calm down.” Ephrim inched forward, holding his hands out. “Take a deep breath. What do you know about Samothes?”

 

“Samothes is my father.” The man slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, knees to his chest. “I killed him, or at least I tried to. Everything after that is a blur.”

 

“You killed…?” Ephrim took a deep breath. “Alright. Okay. That’s-. Okay.” He rubbed at his forehead with his uninjured hand. “What’s your name?”

 

“Maelgywn.” The man’s voice was hesitant but firm. “I don’t suppose you know how long I was down there?”

 

“I’m not sure. Probably long enough that the actual number of years doesn’t matter.” Ephrim held out his unbandaged hand and offered it Maelgwyn. The other man took it and pulled himself up, wincing as the movement shifted the wound in his chest. “Listen, you might want to come with me. The world is getting more and more dangerous, and I don’t trust this tower to stay safe.”

 

Maelgwyn scoffed. “I think that I can handle a little danger.”

 

“Can you handle the Heat and the Dark?” Ephrim asked, more harshly than he intended to. “Because that’s what’s eating away at the rest of the continent.”

 

As soon the words left Ephrim’s mouth, he regretted them. Maelgwyn sagged like he had been punched, still holding on to Ephrim’s hand but gripping it hard enough to break bone.

 

The he laughed, an awful, hollow sound. “Ohh, I really fucked this up. The whole point of this bullshit was that it would stop the Heat and Dark, and I fucked that part up too.”

 

He looked at Ephrim, a grin on his face and tears in his eyes. “I don’t know if you’ve ever felt regret, but it really fucking sucks.”

 

“I can imagine.”

 

“No, I don’t think you can.” Maelgwyn let go of Ephrim’s hand and stumbled towards the door. “I don’t care where you’re going, take me with you.”

 

“That was the plan,” Ephrim said to himself as he watched him walk away.

 

 

(-)

 

 

“So why were you in the forge anyway?” Maelgwyn said, his lips nearly brushing Ephrim’s ear. Having both of them ride the same horse was awkward, but it was faster than walking. Maelgwyn’s arms were latched firmly around Ephrim’s waist, and he rested his chin on the other man’s shoulder when he spoke. “It’s not exactly a popular destination.”

 

“It was a favor for a friend.” Ephrim tried to focus on the path ahead rather than on the feeling of Maelgwyn’s chest pressed up against his back. “He had been to that tower before, and he heard from someone else that strange things were happening in the forge, so he asked me to check it out.”

 

“Hmm.” Maelgwyn took the words into consideration. “The forge isn’t connected to the tower, you know. The tower is just a gate, of sorts. My grandfather asked that it be built to connect the surface to the lower strata so that he could look back at the things that he had rewritten. My fathers designed and built it together.”

 

“Your fathers…?” Ephrim shook his head. “Right, Samothes is your father. You told me that.”

 

“Mm-hmm,” Maelgwyn’s voice was quiet, but the vibration of it rumbled through his chest. “And Samot is my other father, and Samol is my grandfather, and Severia is my aunt, and Galenica, well, they fit in there somewhere too.”

 

Ephrim was almost reluctant to ask his next question, but he took a breath and asked it anyway.

 

“So are you a god?”

 

It took a moment before Maelgwyn answered. “I am something less than them, but more than mortal. It’s hard to say. I was trapped by some force in that forge for a very long time, and I had been trapped once before then. I don’t think that any mortal soul could go through that and survive. Although,” he laughed once without any humor, “it might just be that I have the favor of Tristero on my side.”

 

“Favor or not, you’re pretty resilient.”

 

From a place where Ephrim couldn’t see, Maelgwyn smiled. “It seems that way, yeah.”

 

 

(-)

 

They were a few days into their journey when they came to their first town, little more than a collection of houses in a clearing. As they got closer, though, any hope of seeing more people faded. Gardens were overgrown with weeds, and doors hung open to reveal empty rooms. In one house the ashes of a cooking fire had flared up and consumed an entire wall, leaving a gaping black wound in the structure. All around them, evening was closing in.

 

“We need to rest for the night.” Maelgwyn was the first to dismount, climbing off the horse with a confident ease. “This place is as good as any, and at least we’ll have a roof over our heads if it decides to rain.”

 

Ephrim stayed on the horse. “We don’t know what made these people flee. It could have just been Ordennan military raids, or it could have been something much worse.”

 

“Ephrim.” Maelgwyn offered a hand out to him, a smile on his face. “We’ll be fine. Look, if it makes you feel better, we can hole up in one of these houses and barricade the door while we sleep, but when it comes down to it, I would much rather sleep with four walls and a roof around me than in a tent on the forest floor.”

 

Ephrim huffed. “Fine,” he said, “you’re right. But if we’re sleeping in a house, there better be a bed.”

 

 

As it turned out, of the houses with their walls and doors intact enough to be secure, there was only one house with a bed, and only one bed in that house. It was dusty, but it looked solid enough, and it didn’t collapse when Ephrim sat down.

 

“I can sleep on the floor. You’re the one who wanted the bed, after all.”

 

Ephrim looked up at where Maelgwyn was securing a cabinet in front of the door. “Don’t be stupid. The bed’s big enough for both of us. I’m not going to make you sleep on the floor.”

 

“Alright.” Maelgwyn said, giving an over-exaggerated shrug. “But I’ll have you know that I’m an awful snorer.”

 

Ephrim snorted. “It’s never woken me up before.”

 

 

He wished it had been the snoring that had woken him up.

 

Instead it was a deep sob and the feeling of a body shuddering next to him. In the darkness all he could see was Maelgwyn curled up in a ball, his blanket wrapped tight around him as he shook.

 

Without thinking, Ephrim placed a hand on the other man’s shoulder. Maelgwyn leaned into it, collapsing completely into Ephrim’s arms.

 

“Can you tell me what’s wrong?” he tried to keep his voice calm and level as he spoke.

 

When Maelgwyn opened his mouth, all that would come out was a whine. He shook his head.

 

“Okay.” Ephrim said. “Do you want me to be here?”

 

A nod.

 

“Alright, I’ll stay right here.” Ephrim drew Maelgwyn closer and stroked a hand across his back in absent circles, trying to find some kind of rhythm. Slowly, the tears stopped soaking into Ephrim’s shirt, and the sobs quieted down. Slowly, Maelgwyn’s breathing returned to its normal rate, until for a second Ephrim assumed that the other man had fallen asleep in his arms.

 

“When I killed Samothes, I became Samothes.” The words were quiet, but they hit Ephrim like a blow to the head. Maelgwyn continued. “I stabbed him with this sword that-- the mages said that it would work, but it just made everything worse. When I killed him, part of his essence went into the sword, and part of it went into me, and it consumed me. I wasn’t Maelgwyn anymore. For years and years I walked around with his mind and his face, and I wasn’t trapped, I was just  _ him _ . And then…” Maelgwyn took a deep breath and turned in Ephrim’s arms so that they were sitting face to face. “And then you killed me. You killed him.”

 

The warmth between them suddenly felt like burning, like the time Ephrim tried to swallow the light of a star and it pushed back, burning him from the inside out.

 

“I’m sorry.” he said, not quite sure what else to say. Those weren’t the right words, but they would do for now. The last thing he expected Maelgwyn to do was laugh, but that’s exactly what the other man did, loud and barking.

 

“Ephrim, I did the same damn thing. It’d be a bit hypocritical of me to be angry at you.” He leaned back into Ephrim’s chest. “Besides, if you hadn’t done that, I would have been trapped like that forever. What you did wasn’t a crime, it was a favor.”

 

He looked up at Ephrim, half a smile on his face, and Ephrim couldn’t help it. He took Maelgwyn’s face in his hands and kissed him, slow and deep. Maelgwyn kissed him back, running his hands through his hair and holding him there. When they finally ran out of breath, they rested their foreheads together and grinned.

 

“A favor? Really?” Ephrim said, trying to keep the giddiness out of his voice.

 

“Well, not  _ really _ .” Maelgwyn tilted his head back. “Getting stabbed hurt, like, a lot. But in the end it wasn’t such a bad thing.”

 

The two of them both laughed as they held each other close in the darkness of the late night.

 

 

(-)

 

 

They arrived at the tower in the early morning, the ground still soaked with dew and the sun not yet high enough to warm the earth. In the sky above, lines of star-stuff arced like a spider’s web. Only a few people were up this early, most of them soldiers training for whatever fight might come next.

 

“You didn’t tell me that we were going to the University.” Maelgwyn squeezed tight around Ephrim’s waist as they rode into the settlement.

 

“The mages are gone. All that’s left is the tower.” Ephrim held his head high. People were watching, even if he couldn’t see them.

 

“Well good riddance,” Maelgwyn huffed into the back of his neck.

 

As they walked into the main courtyard, a crowd of children scattered in front of them, a mix of humans, halflings, oni, and the occasional orc. They ran off laughing, shouting that one of their leaders had come back from his journey with a strange man in tow. Slowly, the world around them began to wake, people emerging from converted classrooms and dormitories and chatting about all the things that needed to be done.

 

Hadrian spotted them before he could spot him, emerging from a door just behind them and calling out a greeting.

 

“Ephrim!” he said, “Good to see that you made it back. Who’s your friend?”

 

Ephrim turned. Beside him, Maelgwyn grabbed onto his hand almost instinctively. He could feel in the grip that the other man was tense, full of the kind of nervousness that he would pretend to never experience.

 

“This is Maelgwyn.” Ephrim kept his voice even and calm. “He was in the forge.”

 

Hadrian’s eyes flashed with recognition. “Stay right here,” he said, “I need to go get someone.”

 

“Do people know my name?” Maelgwyn asked as Hadrian hurried away. “Do they tell stories about me?”

 

“I never did, but maybe I will now.” Ephrim nudged him with an elbow and smiled.

 

 

When Hadrian returned, it was with two men in tow-- one broad and dark, an open robe showing off muscle, the other tall, with a mane of golden hair flying out behind him like a cape. When he saw them, Maelgwyn squeezed Ephrim’s hand even tighter.

 

Samot was the first to break into a run, picking up speed when the recognition hit him. Maelgwyn followed, breaking away from Ephrim to run towards his fathers. By the time Samothes reached the two of them, they were already clutching each other tight, and he pulled them both into his arms with ease.

 

“So, did you know that Maelgwyn was Samothes and Samot’s son?” Hadrian’s words startled Ephrim, who had been so focused on watching the scene in front of him that he hadn’t noticed the other man standing next to him.

 

“He told me, yeah,” Ephrim said.

 

“Huh.” Hadrian scratched the back of his head. “You know, I never knew that they had a son.”

 

Ephrim hummed a reply, not fully taking in Hadrian’s words. The family had untangled themselves from each other and were walking towards him. Maelgwyn had a smile on his face, wide and genuine.

 

When Ephrim opened his mouth to speak, Maelgwyn picked him up instead, twirling him around, dipping him, and kissing him for long enough that Hadrian began to cough awkwardly in the background.

 

“Thank you,” Maelgwyn whispered when they broke apart, “for freeing me from that place.”

 

Ephrim laughed against his lips. “Thanks for not being mad that I killed you.”

 

They both laughed at that, close in each other’s arms, feeling the warmth of touch spread and blossom.

 

It was spring, and things were new, and beautiful, and bright.


End file.
